MORGANTOWN — The vision behind the bill creating the Mountaineer Trail Network Authority was a series of multi-county trail networks crisscrossing West Virginia.
The reality is it’s going to take quite a bit of peddling to get there.
Senate Bill 317, signed into law by Governor Jim Justice earlier this year, allows three or more adjacent counties to form a multi-county mountain biking trail network authority. It also specifically created the Mountaineer Trail Network Recreation Authority serving Barbour, Grant, Harrison, Marion, Mineral, Monongalia, Preston, Randolph, Taylor and Tucker counties.
Monongalia County Commissioner Ed Hawkins explained that he attended a meeting earlier this week hosted by Preston County and Friends of the Cheat to begin that process.
Hawkins said the county commissions of the participating counties need to nominate two people to serve on the authority.
“That would allow a meeting to be held to discuss and write bylaws. Once the bylaws are written, the body could apply for 501(c)(3) status so that we could begin to market this,” Hawkins said, explaining that in the beginning, letting people know what’s already available is critical.
“That’s going to be the key element in the beginning. This is a marketing item to try to get recognition for what we already have. Then, hopefully in time, you’ll start to see some connectivity with this. That would be a goal,” he said.
Friends of the Cheat recently used $50,000 in grant funding from the Appalachian Regional Commission’s POWER Initiative to hire environmental and economic development consulting firm Downstream Strategies.
Joey James, of Downstream Strategies, explained the firm was brought in to develop a plan for implementing the Mountaineer Trail Network in Preston County and, eventually, across North Central West Virginia.
That plan will consider a number of issues, including legal questions regarding participating land owners, assessments of demographics and local economic factors, environmental conditions and cultural resources, infrastructure and routes assessments.
Along with providing specific answers to Preston County, the effort will provide a scalable template for other counties to follow.
“Our hope is that our plan will, more or less, tee the regional trail system project up for implementation,” James explained. “The ultimate goal is to not only develop a regional trail system, but also the businesses associated with making North Central West Virginia a regional outdoor recreation destination.”
He went on to say that once Downstream Strategies has the Preston County data in hand, the parties will seek additional POWER grant dollars, likely in the millions, to make it a reality.
In the meantime, Hawkins said, counties are going to have to inventory what they’ve got — which may very well be more than they know.
“This is going to create a group to go after funding to extend and connect trails, but first of all let’s start bringing people to the trails we have,” he said. “I had a GIS mapping done of the trails and, honestly, there are all these places on the map that already exist that I didn’t know anything about.”
The purpose of the Technical Assistance and Planning Grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission’s POWER — Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization — Initiative is to assist coal-impacted communities and regions with plans and strategies to transform their local economies.
